AI Powered Insights Conference 2026

John-William Awbrey, Head Of Brand & Campaign Insights, Sky
John-William Awbrey, head of brand & campaign insights at Sky. With nearly 10 years client-side and previous experience agency-side, John-William has built a career around making marketing effectiveness both actionable and influential.
He developed SkyaÄôs measurement framework and helped shape its creative evaluation approach, giving teams clearer ways to achieve better brand and campaign outcomes. Whether itaÄôs testing creative or translating insights for the C-suite, his focus is on bringing rigor and real-world impact to brand performance.

Joseph Brooker, Senior Business Program Manager, Microsoft
Joseph Brooker is a seasoned Senior Business Program Manager at Microsoft with a strategic focus on driving operational excellence and data-informed decision-making. With a strong background in sales analytics and process optimisation, Joseph plays a pivotal role in aligning sales strategies with business goals. Having worked within Banking, Data Consultancy and Tech, he collaborates closely with cross-functional teams, including finance, marketing, and Sales teams, to streamline workflows, improve forecasting accuracy, and enhance overall sales performance. Known for his analytical rigor and collaborative leadership, Joseph supports executive-level initiatives and contributes to global sales operations planning.

Luke Cadman, Senior Partner, Flood
Luke co-founded Flood, with over 15 years of experience running quant research studies from agencies in the UK and Middle East. He specialises in delivering innovative quant methodologies which balance rigour with meaningful insight. 

Dr Angad Chowdhry, Co-Founder & CPO, Quilt.AI

Chris Courtney-Smith, Director of Data Operations, News UK, The Times
Chris Courtney-Smith is Director of Data and Insight at News UK, where he leads three teams spanning behavioural analytics, consumer insight, and experimentation. With thirteen years at the business, he has built a practice that sits at the intersection of editorial, product, marketing, and commercial, connecting insight to decisions that drive subscriber growth and reduce churn. His work focuses on demonstrating the commercial value of research, not as a supporting function, but as a driver of business outcomes. He is an advocate for method-agnostic insight and has been an early adopter of synthetic research within a major media organisation.

Babita Earle, Managing Director, International, Zappi 
Babita Earle is Managing Director, International at Zappi, where she leads the companyaÄôs international business and growth strategy across markets outside the United States. Previously she served as Executive Vice President of Global Enterprise Partnerships, working with global customers to drive value and growth on the platform, and founded the Insight Alliance, a community of insights leaders focused on advancing the industry.
Before joining Zappi, Babita spent over a decade at GfK, where she led global client development for the UK business and established its digital research function. She is an active member of the Market Research Society and an advisor to the Women in Research (WIRe) community.

Kylie Fitpatrick, Director, Verve   
At Verve, Kylie leads the Build Studio team at Verve, where she helps organisations harness AI to bring consumer insight closer to decision-making. With 17 yearsaÄô experience in the research industry, she specialises in combining deep consumer understanding with emerging technologies to help brands explore ideas faster and make better innovation decisions 

Rosie Foster-Carter, Principal Behavioural Scientist, CogCo
Rosie is a Principal Associate in Behavioural Science at CogCo. Her focus lies in helping companies understand and define their major challenges, and apply science and creativity to address them. She previously specialised in Strategy and Marketing, with experience across start-ups, global corporates and NGOs.

Edward Gardiner, Managing Director and Co-Founder, CogCo
Edward is Managing Director at CogCo, a role which includes overseeing the company's AI product development. This includes BengoAI, which transforms customer research into sets of interactive profiles.  Previously, he was a Founding Member of Common Collective and led the Behavioural Design Lab, a partnership between Warwick Business School and the Design Council. He holds a PhD in Behavioural Science from WBS.

Rhys Harmour, Commercial Consultant, Ipsos Data Labs
Rhys Harmour is a Commercial Consultant at Ipsos Data Labs, specialising in automation, reporting, and end-to-end data collection.
Rhys' expertise lies in consolidating vast amounts of retailer and distributor data to provide a single source of truth on third-party performance, with a core focus on providing clarity and ease of access for end users. Most recently, Rhys has been leading the Microsoft workstream to expand this work from purely servicing EU markets, to a global reach.
Alongside this, Rhys is a strong advocate for the adoption of AI to drive efficiencies and productivity, using it to assist with converting code between programme languages, speeding up migration tasks and identifying opportunities for optimisations.

Emma Hart, Junior Partner, Flood
In research for over 10 years, Emma has spent time across agencies large and small, working with clients across all kinds of sectors and markets to design research that shines more light on what people really think and feel. She has been with Flood over the past three years, working to further their mission of making online research more engaging: to get more out of respondents and what surveys can tell us.

Sarah Holiday, Director, Research and Behavioral Science, Pfizer
Sarah has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 28 years in a variety of roles that have included sales, training, health and value, marketing (customer, brand and digital) and social media comms. In 2021, Sarah founded and developed Pfizer's behavioral science capability, providing Pfizer with a consistent and validated way of integrating behavioral science into problem solving to improve health outcomes.  In this role Sarah has supported numerous teams in Pfizer to design, test and implement solutions to colleague, patient and HCP behavioral challenges.

Leon Hubert, Lead User Research Consultant, Hippo Digital
Leon is a user researcher and user-centred design leader specialising in qualitative methods, inclusion, and applying AI to UCD processes.

Rosie Hudson, Global Insight Manager, No7 Beauty Company 

Lucia Juliano, UK Head of Research, Toluna

Ben Lewis, Insight Lead – Homecare, Unilever

Daniela Lipkin, Associate Director, Verve 
Daniela is a consumer insight strategist with ten yearsaÄô experience across the FMCG, health, beauty  and retail sectors. Driven by curiosity and a deep passion for understanding people, she specialises in transforming consumer perspectives into clear, strategic insight that supports confident decision-making. Daniela focuses on uncovering meaningful human truths and translating them into actionable opportunities for growth and innovation.  

Kelly McKnight, Executive Director, Verve
Kelly is an award-winning insight leader at VERVE, pioneering new ways to understand people through Verve Intelligent Personas & Simulations (VIPS) - simulated audiences powered by real data and built for real-world decisions. With a background in cultural intelligence and a love of the unexpected, Kelly blends tech, empathy and edge to help global brands decode what people really think, feel, and do. SheaÄôs a strategist, storyteller and disruptor - on a mission to make insight braver, smarter and infinitely more useful.

Dr Nicki Morley, Global MD Innovation solutions, Kantar
Nicki Morley is KantaraÄôs Global Innovation Lead, bringing extensive expertise from 8 years at Kantar and over 13 years in Consumer Insights at Unilever across R&D and Marketing. She leads KantaraÄôs global Innovation solution area, shaping strategy, strengthening expertise, and ensuring innovation teams are indispensable partners to brands. With a PhD in behavioural science and postaÄëdoctoral work in design thinking, Nicki blends academic rigour with deep commercial experience. Her mission is to help clients identify, develop, and launch meaningful and different innovations, acting as a strategic sparring partner to many of KantaraÄôs top global clients.

Liz Norman, CEO, Elizbeth Norman International  Katie O’Connor, SVP, Behaviourally 

Marc Olm Serra, Lead Data Scientist, Sky

Matthew Picton, Head of Research, Dubit
Matt Picton is an insights and analytics leader with over 25 yearsaÄô experience helping organisations turn complex research and data into clear, commercially actionable strategy. He has led insight teams and large-scale research programmes across sectors including media, retail, financial services, FMCG, technology and online entertainment. Currently Head of Research at Dubit, Matt works with global brands to guide future strategy and growth through evidence-based understanding of kids, teens and parents behaviour, attitudes and preferences.

Hannah Robbins, Lead, Quantum CS
Hannah has been immersed in the world of brand strategy for 7 years, bringing her training in social anthropology to the commercial context.
With a grounding in semiotics and cultural research, she is at home with unpicking cultural undercurrents and the shifting trends and ideas within cohorts and geographies., as well as decoding the visual cues and codes across categories. With prior experience in consumer fieldwork and futures led projects, she enjoys using a range of methodologies in her work.
Outside of work, Hannah is a keen potter, creating all manner of ceramic bowls, vases and sculptures which can often be spotted in the background of her video calls.
Hannah has a depth of experience working across positioning, purpose and innovation studies for a range of global FMCG, beauty and tech clients.

Owain Service, CEO and Co-Founder, CogCo
Owain is the CEO of CogCo. He is also an Honorary Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick University. He was previously the Managing Director of the UK GovernmentaÄôs Behavioural Insights Team. He has spent much of his career helping organisations to build their internal capabilities relating to the behaviours of their customers and employees, which now includes making use of the latest developments in the field of AI.

Iain Stanfield, Head of Insight UK&I, Specsavers
Iain has spent 35 years in research or research-related roles. The majority within agencies, until joining Specsavers 6 years ago to see what life was like on the other side of the fence! He currently leads the UK Insight function at Specsavers, covering a wide range of research programmes and tools plus marketing effectiveness. 

Mike Stevens, Founder, Insight Platforms

Leanne Tomasevic, Insights & Strategy, Electric Twin
Leanne Tomasevic leads Insight and Strategy at Electric Twin, bringing a career built on the commercial application of research. Previously Head of Insight at Tracksuit and a MD of Truth Consulting, she has spent her career helping organisations turn insight into decisions that matter. Over the past year, working first as an adviser and now full time at Electric Twin, she has focused on how synthetic audience capabilities can extend what insight teams deliver, without replacing the human judgement at the centre of good research. Her work sits at the intersection of traditional insight craft and emerging technology. She is a Fellow of the Market Research Society.

Deirdre van Zyl, Head of Innovation Planning/ Insight, Diageo
Deirdre van Zyl is Head of Innovation Planning and Insight at Diageo, where she leads insight supporting innovation strategy and growth opportunities. She brings more than 20 years of experience in consumer insight and analytics across leading global companies including Johnson & Johnson, Mars, Reckitt Benckiser and Pfizer, helping organizations translate consumer understanding into decisions that shape brand strategy, innovation and consumer engagement.